Monday, February 22, 2016

I WILL NO LONGER PURCHASE CRAP

Here's the deal.I have
an extremely limited, disability income, and I'm very choosy about what I buy
from month to month.As a writer,
publisher, and editor I have become acquainted with many, many writer friends,
most of whom self-publish their work as I do, or they publish via small
presses.

I congratulate them on their fortitude, and am excited for
them whenever their books come out, because I know that every word is a dream
realized for them.

But I also know that some of their realized dreams came true
because they took shortcuts and that their paper and ink, and electronic products
are flawed. Some of their dreams have
become nightmares to read.

They depend on technology to edit their books, which comes
up short because nothing replaces human eyes reading a book, word by word to eliminate errors and awkward
sentences and paragraphs.

This is not the first time I've written about editing one's
manuscript.In fact I've harped on it
quite a lot in this blog.Letting a
sloppy-ass manuscript get into print, either electronic print or ink print is
disrespectful to your readers.If you
expect them to spend their hard-earned money on your book, then you need to get
off your lazy ass and make it clean.

I have reached the point where I'm disgusted enough with
what I've read in the past couple of months, to begin book shopping much, much
more discriminately.Here's what I
mean:

I will thoroughly read the cover, front and
back, of the book.If there is even one
error there, I will not purchase it.Any
author that allows an error to show up on their cover can't possibly care about
or respect the reader's investment of time or money.

I will read the sample pages on Amazon or read
the first twenty pages in the book store.If there are errors in those first few pages, I will just assume that
the book is poorly edited and the author is too lazy or inept to fix problems,
and move on to a book where the author gives a damn.

It's that simple.You
either care or you don't.You either
have a passion to tell stories and engage readers and give them a polished book
worthy of their time and money, or you're pumping out crap as fast as you can
that isn't worth the reader's effort to turn the pages.

This reader is disgusted with the crap out there on the
market. I will no longer buy it.I will, if I consider you a friend, tell you
why I didn't buy your book.Because
friends tell friends, in a polite way, when they are screwing up.But I won't buy crap.Not anymore.

On
September 13th, 2015 Terri married her Hottie Scottie, Blaze
McRob (Robert Nelson), who is an equally twisted horror writer who found her
online, crept into her world, swept her off her feet and revels in the fact that
they are two peas in a very strange pod.

No
doubt there will be many dark fiction tales for ooky aficionados to revel in
coming very soon.